


Good Fences

by Serpentine



Category: Dragaera - Steven Brust
Genre: Families of Choice, Female Friendship, Gen, HC Bingo, Hurt/Comfort, prompt: theft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-28 15:36:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/309393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serpentine/pseuds/Serpentine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cawti doesn't know which is more to blame for the loss of her marriage: the Jhereg, or Vlad himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good Fences

Norathar gives her that strange blankfaced look whenever she turns her tongue against the Jhereg, and Cawti generally tapers her rant into silence within a sentence or two. Norathar doesn't have to say anything; in the back of her mind, Cawti already knows all the reasons why it's ridiculous: she was a Jhereg for years, and Norathar was a Jhereg for centuries, and it's not as if she's just discovered them, and it's not as if she didn't profit from them, and it's not as if killing them all would stop people exploiting each other.

And the father of her child is a Jhereg. But that's the reason why she's so angry, really. The reasons, in fact.

Being a Jhereg is the reason Vladimir isn't here. Jhereg who turn Imperial informer have lifespans measured in minutes; by being a Jhereg, Vladimir's betrayal has set death on his heels. For now, Vladimir has evaded the Jhereg who want to take his lifeblood by letting them take his life, instead: though he preserves his physical existence, he has let them take from him his wife, his child, the ruins of their marriage, the chance to introduce his son to his grandfather (the only human, she sometimes thinks, that Vladimir really cares about or has any bond to in this life). All this is sacrificed because Vlad was a Jhereg when he spoke to the Empress, and the House of Jhereg is a compilation of corruption that must kill Vlad to maintain itself.

The more insidious reason is the mess lurking in her heart. Vladimir, her son's father, is a Jhereg, and she now sees all that that means: he has profited from the exploitation of her -- their -- people. Still doesn't see why it bothers her, either. She'd laughed in the face of a mark who called her "morally bankrupt", because she'd earned more killing him than he'd ever make in his miserable life. Now she feels the weight of the phrase. _Her son_ comes from that. Little Vlad, who trusts her and loves her, and whom she would protect from the entire world -- his father doesn't even understand what there is to protect him _from_. Even if he were here to protect the child, he doesn't understand what the enemy is.

Cawti buries herself in her son and her infant revolution, because she doesn't know which she blames more for the things that have been stolen from her: her husband or her former House.

\------------------------

The Duchess of Whitecrest appears on Cawti's doorstep and hurls a lepip into the carefully constructed order of Cawti's days. It lays bare once again the shaky foundation beneath: a broken marriage and a lost husband, and beneath that Cawti's own time spent wearing Jhereg colours and taking Jhereg lives.

That Vlad is being accused of stealing a useless trinket does not escape her sense of irony. That she is still willing to don the grey and black, and the nervous thrill of a paranoid predator, for the sake of proving him innocent of this theft... feels more like hot irons than irony, and not least because of how few resources she has outside an old cloak and a few pieces of steel.

Cawti rarely sees Norathar anymore; the Dragon Heir to the Imperial Throne drops by occasionally to see her, in the few moments she can spare from being an important part of the system oppressing Cawti and her people, but to spend more time with a Jhereg who is also an Easterner would risk her new status.

She steadfastly ignores the leap of joy in her heart when Norathar answers her plea, but she can't stop feeling it. All through the operation she can feel Norathar's presence: a granite block contributing its steadiness to Cawti as she works to save the man she can't keep. Even as the sense of _being Jhereg_ unsettles her mind, the rightness of her sister's restored presence wraps around her heart like a warm blanket.

Afterward, before they part again to their dissimilar lives, Norathar clasps her shoulder hard for a moment, as though she's holding onto the moment, or their sister-bond. It's painful in the physical sense -- Dragaeran strength disagrees with Easterner bones -- but Cawti still doesn't want it to end. Vlad is still lost to her, but Norathar, whom she had long before and longer than Vlad, has returned. Cawti's not the only one who felt this loss, either, which makes it so much lighter a burden that it might float away entirely.

When Norathar steps away at last, Cawti lifts her hand in a wave that turns into a gesture of release.


End file.
